I HAVE often said that if it wasn't for me the Comet would never have been built.

I was an apprentice bricklayer with a Portsmouth construction firm, and one day I, together with a mate, barrow, and digging tools, was sent to Portsmouth Airfield, specifically to the De Havilland works.

The bosses had found that they could not complete the body rings of a new plane because the roof wasn't high enough. To get over this I had to excavate a hole in the floor about 3ft (a metre) deep and four yards square (four metres), lay a concrete base and construct walls around this pit.

As the area is only just above sea level the wall was lined with hot asphalt, and I had to protect it with a further wall.

While the materials were setting I took advantage to have a good look around. We were working next to a boiling hot anodising trough, which was used to treat every alloy part, however small. The factory was crammed with lathes, presses, planers and all sorts of other expensive machinery, some of which was a carry-over from the Spitfire construction days, probably.

Anyway, I was convinced from that time onwards that I was on the threshold of the future.

Pity it all seems to have been thrown away.

Tony F Newell

Tavistock